There Are Far Worse Things A Parent Can Be Than Old

January 02, 1994|By Joan Beck.

`Women do not have the right to have a child. The child has a right to a suitable home."

British Health Secretary Virginia Bottomley may have a point. But she aimed her barb at the wrong target-the 59-year-old woman who gave birth to twins in a London hospital on Christmas Day. The oldest new mother on record, she had donor eggs, fertilized by sperm from her husband, implanted in her uterus in a fertility clinic in Rome, after British doctors refused to treat her because of her age.

Identified only as a wealthy business woman married to a 45-year-old economist, the mother is described as healthy and financially secure, with a supportive family. Why shouldn't she have a baby if she wants one enough to endure the infertility treatments, the pregnancy and a Caesarean section?

But Bottomley and others have wasted no time stirring up criticism and controversy about the babies. The Health Secretary is talking about conferring with other countries about "ethical controls" that would prevent the use of such infertility treatments for older women, even if they pay the costs themselves and do not involve government health programs.

Other British physicians and politicians are publicly calling for new laws throughout Europe to ban pregnancies among older, post-menopausal women.

What has the woman done that merits such ethical concern and public criticism? She isn't an unmarried, 15-year-old high school dropout whose unplanned baby will put her on welfare, perhaps for decades. She isn't 21 and having her fourth baby by four men, none of whom will actively father their children.

She hasn't been using crack or other illegal drugs during pregnancy, condemning her unborn infant to neurological problems of unpredictable severity. She's not passing along the AIDS virus or forcing fetal alcohol syndrome on her child by her drinking. She's not risking her baby's health by skipping prenatal care.

Her twins aren't the unintended and unwanted consequence of careless sex. They are the result of a long, costly, difficult effort to have children long after childbearing seemed biologically impossible.

She may not have as much energy as a younger mother. She may not live long enough to see her children's children. (Surely it is evidence of sexual bias that these arguments are made only about women, not about men who become fathers in their 50s or 60s.)

But the odds are her twins will be more likely to have a "suitable home" than tens of thousands of babies born this year in the United States and Britain.

Bottomley and other critics may have an argument about limiting use of expensive and often unsuccessful test-tube baby services provided by Britain's tight-fisted national health plan to younger women where chances of failure may be less. (Britain rations some other kinds of costly health care by age.)

But zeal for saving the British money shouldn't lead these opponents to try to influence treatment available in other nations or to stop women from using their own money to pay for the fertility treatment they want.

The fuss has already spread to Italy where a senator, who is also a gynecologist, has introduced legislation that would forbid the use of such in-vitro fertilizations for women already past menopause.

The most visible target for this outburst of self-righteous ethical concern is the Italian fertility doctor Severino Antinori, who helped the British mother become pregnant. One of his current patients, who is now three months pregnant, will be 63 when she gives birth. She and her husband, who is a year older, decided to try to have another child after their teenage son was killed in a traffic accident.

Of course a baby should be entitled to a "suitable home," to a mother and a father who are actively involved in his care and have the maturity and resources to provide for his needs and to give him the best possible start in life. Most of all, he should be entitled to be wanted and loved.

But there is no reason to assume that the British mother and her husband or the Italian couple or any of the other post-menopausal women who have given birth or are now pregnant will not provide a suitable home.

There is great reason, however, for Bottomley and her colleagues to be concerned about the babies being born all over the world without suitable homes or caring, able, energetic parents.

What can be done about women who won't-or can't-stop using crack or other illegal drugs or alcohol during pregnancy and imposing known risks on their unborn offspring? What kind of suitable home will such women provide for a baby, who may be born already impaired?

Why not devote more ethical concern to mothers who are too young instead of too old, to young teenagers who are too immature even to care for themselves well, who have cut short their education and cut off their job prospects, who do not or cannot provide their offspring with an active and involved father? Many of these babies, by default, will essentially be raised by their grandmothers, who may not only be short of energy but of basic resources.

If Bottomley wants to charge up her counterparts in other nations to take on these ethical concerns, she may be able to accomplish far more than she can by trying to prevent a few pregnancies in older women.

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Charles Krauthammer is on vacation. His column will resume shortly and appear on Mondays thereafter. Joan Beck will appear on Sundays and Thursdays.